Carnegie Council Audio Podcast

Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs

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Listen to events at Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. Speakers and interviewees include distinguished authors, government and UN officials, economists, policymakers, and businesspeople. Topics range from the ethics of war and peac...Show More

The crucible of America's presidency has forged some of the very best and very worst leaders in our national history, along with many in between. From Abraham Lincoln's political savvy and rhetorical gifts to James Buchanan's indecisiveness, "The Pre...Show More

Senior Fellow Kavitha Rajagopalan discusses the ongoing Indian election through the complicated lens of citizenship and explains the vast power of political organizing and social media in the "world's largest democracy." What's at stake if Prime Mini...Show More

A lot of the talk about the Mueller Report has focused on its political and legal implications, but how will it affect U.S. foreign policy? Adelphi College's Jonathan Cristol discusses the reactions of allies and adversaries to Trump's passivity in t...Show More

From the French Revolution to the Arab Spring to #MeToo, how does social change happen? In a book that was 25 years in the making, Cass Sunstein unpacks this puzzle by exploring the interplay of three decisive factors. Don't miss this insightful talk...Show More

Central European University's President Michael Ignatieff is a human rights scholar, an educator, a former politician, and, as he tells us, the son of a refugee. He discusses what he calls "the ordinary virtues," such as patience and tolerance; the s...Show More

On the 44th anniversary of the Khmer Rouge entering Phnom Penh, the Brennan Center's Andrew Boyle discusses his work helping to prosecute the perpetrators the of genocide and other crimes against humanity in 1970s Cambodia. Boyle details the cases, t...Show More

In this episode of the Crack-Up series on 1919, Andrew Roberts, author of "Churchill: Walking with Destiny," examines how Churchill dealt with the complicated problems facing Great Britain at the end of World War I, including how to treat the Germans...Show More

We've been through information and technology revolutions before, going back to Gutenberg, says former chairman of the FCC Tom Wheeler. Now it's our turn to be at a terminus of history and the rules that worked for industrial capitalism are probably ...Show More

As part of Carnegie Council's Information Warfare podcast series, Devin Stewart interviews Joshua Kurlantzick about his recent project on Chinese media and influence campaigns and techniques in East Asia. Kurlantzick connects his project, which will ...Show More

With millions of Venezuelans fleeing the Maduro regime, what are the effects on Latin America and the Caribbean? What could or should the United States do? Is it helpful to compare this situation to the Syrian refugee crisis? Senior Fellow Kavitha Ra...Show More

In this wide-ranging talk, Carnegie Council Senior Fellow Alexander Görlach discusses the importance of empathy in liberal democracies, the shocking Uyghur detention in China, and how AI is affecting all facets of society. What does liberalism look l...Show More

"Climate, cyber, then mass gun violence, sometimes motivated by terrorist ideology--and the ideology can most frequently be tied to far-right-wing extremism, sometimes tied to no ideology at all, sometimes tied to pathology. Those three things I thin...Show More

For about 18 months after World War I there was what historian Erez Manela calls the "Wilsonian moment"--a brief period when President Woodrow Wilson led people around the world to believe that he would champion a new world order of self-determinatio...Show More

To celebrate the record number of women elected into Congress, the 63rd session of the Commission on the Status of Women at the UN, and Women's History Month, Carnegie Council partnered with UN Women of New York for a panel with U.S. Congresswoman Yv...Show More

A week after the horrific terrorist attack on two New Zealand mosques, Carnegie Council Senior Fellow Kavitha Rajagopalan discusses immigration policies and xenophobia in Australia and the United States and how they reverberate throughout the world. ...Show More

In this in-depth conversation, Oxford Internet Institute researcher Nick Monaco reviews the history of computational propaganda (online disinformation),which goes back almost two decades and includes countries ranging from Mexico to South Korea. His...Show More

"Nobody fights conventionally except for us anymore, yet we're sinking a big bulk, perhaps the majority of our defense dollars, into preparing for another conventional war, which is the very definition of insanity," declares national security strateg...Show More

Could the shared historical memory of March 1 ever be a source of unity between North Koreans and South Koreans? In this fascinating episode of The Crack-Up series that explores how 1919 shaped the modern world, Professor Kyung Moon Hwang discusses t...Show More

As the debates about the Southern border continue, the Brennan Center's Andrew Boyle details the 1976 law behind Trump's February 15 emergency declaration. As he tells it, the National Emergencies Act was put in place, in the wake of Watergate, to co...Show More

After working in China for six years on many stories unfavorable to the Chinese government, in 2018 journalist Megha Rajagopalan's visa was not renewed, forcing her to leave China abruptly. Why? She's still not sure and says that the government uses ...Show More

Wendell Wallach, consultant, ethicist, and scholar at the Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, discusses some of the current issues in artificial intelligence (AI), including his push for international governance of the technology. He and hos...Show More

"We're all really proud of our system. It's the world's oldest democracy, and we've always had to fight to make it real," says Michael Waldman of the Brennan Center for Justice. "But in the last 10-20 years and especially recently we've seen challeng...Show More

Are we headed for a U.S.-China tech Cold War and what should we do about it? "There's no way we're ever going to beat China on scale," says Adam Segal, author of "The Hacked World Order." "They're just always going to spend more than we are, so that ...Show More

Adelphi University's Jonathan Cristol discusses the Trump administration's decision to step away from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) and its possible effects on international arms control. Why is this a positive development for Pu...Show More

Does preventive war really work? "In the vast majority of cases historically, what we see is the country that thought it was saving itself from a greater danger in the future actually creates this greater danger because you generate a level of hostil...Show More

Why has there been a sudden interest in Thucydides, especially in the U.S.? Johanna Hanink discusses her new book of translations and introductions to key speeches from his "History of the Peloponnesian War," and the importance of the classics in gen...Show More

Jazz historian David Sager describes the beginnings of jazz and its enthusiastic reception in France during World War I. He tells the amazing and tragic story of African American musician James Reese Europe, a leader in the creation and acceptance of...Show More

Jonathan Cristol, author of "The United States and Taliban before and after 9/11," discusses the status of the latest talks between the U.S. government and the Taliban, in an effort to end the decades-long war in Afghanistan. Are women's rights being...Show More

U.S.-Taiwan relations have long been an ingenious balancing act of "strategic ambiguity." What does the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act entail and why is it important, not only to Taiwan, but to U.S.-China relations and indeed security across Asia? Legenda...Show More

"There are areas where China lags behind other countries in its power, areas where it's catching up, and areas where China really has leapfrogged some other countries, including the United States, and is pulling ahead," says Bonnie Glaser of CSIS. Ce...Show More

Quinnipiac's Sujata Gadkar-Wilcox discusses her work researching the conception of human rights in a community in rural India. She tells the story of Chaya Kakade, a woman who went on a hunger strike after the Indian government proposed a tax on sani...Show More

"The rise of China is not the biggest story in the world," says Parag Khanna. "The Asianization of Asia, the return of Asia, the rise of the Asian system, is the biggest story in the world." This new Asian system, where business, technology, globali...Show More

How is China influencing democracies such as Taiwan, Korea, and the United States? "I think there are three areas that you can look at," says Asia security analyst Rachael Burton. "The first is narrative dominance, which I would call a form of cognit...Show More

In this episode of The Crack-Up series, which explores how 1919 shaped the modern world, film historian David Bordwell discusses two big changes in the American film industry in 1919: the revolt of film stars against the powerful studio system, and P...Show More

Ambassador Sidi Omar, UN representative for Frente POLISARIO, a liberation movement aiming to secure the independence of Western Sahara, discusses the decades-long dispute in Northwest Africa. With negotiations ongoing between Frente POLISARIO and Mo...Show More

The Supreme Court's 1919 decision in "Schenck v. United States" is one of the most important free speech cases in American history. Because of it we have an elaborate set of free speech laws and norms, but the context is always shifting. In this fasc...Show More

As founder and executive director of The Polis Project, a research and journalism organization, Suchitra Vijayan is helping to document a concerning trend of identity-based violence in India. She discusses her organization's work on this issue, the v...Show More

In the third podcast in The Crack-Up series, which looks at how 1919 shaped the modern world, Ted Widmer discusses the story of the Irish Declaration of Independence with fellow historian Christopher Pastore. Although the declaration was signed in 19...Show More

Discussions around cybersecurity often focus on the security and sovereignty of states, not individuals, says Professor Ronald Deibert, director of University of Toronto's Citizen Lab. If you start from a "human-centric perspective," it could lead to...Show More

Quinnipiac University's Sujata Gadkar-Wilcox speaks about her 2018 campaign for state representative in Connecticut, which she lost by a slim margin. After months of speaking to her fellow citizens and absorbing their differing viewpoints on the camp...Show More

China's economy has grown exponentially over the last four decades, but George Magnus, former chief economist at UBS, sees four traps that could derail its continued ascent: rising debt, the struggle to keep its currency stable, aging demographics, a...Show More

In the second podcast in The Crack-Up series, which looks at how 1919 shaped the modern world, historian Ted Widmer talks to Harvard's Professor Lisa McGirr about Prohibition's roots in anti-immigrant sentiment and its enforcement, in some cases, by ...Show More

Historian Ted Widmer discusses his new Carnegie Council podcast series "The Crack-Up" and how 1919 has shaped the modern world. He and host Alex Woodson speak about parallels to 2019, Woodrow Wilson and the League of Nations, Babe Ruth, the early day...Show More

If populism is a reaction to a globalism that is viewed as unresponsive to the needs of citizens, can populism sustain any version of globalization? Eurasia Group's Ian Bremmer and Tom Nichols of the U.S. Naval War College discuss and debate this imp...Show More

The wide array of global issues--more than 90 percent of them--that Eurasia Group follows are now headed in the wrong direction in 2019. Eurasia Group president Ian Bremmer break down those risks--from U.S.-China relations and cyberwar to European po...Show More

From the U.S. operation against Iran's nuclear enrichment plant, to Chinese theft of personal data, North Korea's financially motivated attacks on American companies, or Russia's interference in the 2016 election, cyberweapons have become the weapon ...Show More

Now based in California, Mark Payumo previously served as a Philippine Army Special Forces officer. Reflecting on his recent Carnegie Council site visit to Manila to investigate climate change and the role of the defense establishment, he concludes t...Show More

National security expert and U.S. Army veteran Asha Castleberry makes sense of a busy and seemingly chaotic time for the Department of Defense in the wake of Secretary Mattis' departure. What should we think about Trump's plans in Syria and Afghanist...Show More

This podcast is part of "The Crack-Up," a special series about the events of 1919, a year that in many ways shaped the 20th century and the modern world. In this episode, host Ted Widmer speaks with fellow historian Patty O'Toole about her "New York ...Show More

Gold leaf tattoos that would act as a screen for our devices, chips implanted in our brains--these are some of the worrying technologies under development with no thought of the consequences to our minds and bodies, says crisis management expert Ian ...Show More

Waleed Alhariri, U.S. director of the Sana'a Center for Strategic Studies, discusses major developments in the Yemen conflict, which remains the world's worst humanitarian crisis. With renewed momentum at the UN and in U.S. Congress, an increased int...Show More

Elana Beiser of the Committee to Protect Journalists discusses the latest CPJ report, which finds that for the third year in a row, 251 or more journalists are jailed around the world, suggesting the authoritarian approach to critical news coverage i...Show More

Pacific Delegates Austin McKinney and Chetan Pedada both have military backgrounds and technology expertise. They discuss ways in which machine-learning and military cooperation could help the Philippines cope with climate change and natural disaster...Show More

Yoko Okura of Mercy Corps discusses her recent visit to Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh, the site of a camp for 1 million Rohingya refugees. She learned every day, that 700 tons of trees--four football fields--are being cut down for firewood and constructi...Show More

There are few, if any, who understand the Korean Peninsula situation better than Ambassador Hill. He served as U.S. ambassador to South Korea and assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, and was head of the U.S. delegation to ...Show More

Carnegie Council Senior Fellow Nikolas Gvosdev and host Alex Woodson discuss the state of foreign policy after the midterm elections. How can newcomers like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have a tangible effect in Washington? Will Democrats be able to unit...Show More

"You saw the Russians start to pay attention to social media, in particular after Obama's election, because the way that he was elected was new to them. They always watch our elections very closely. So you see them toying around in this whole space o...Show More

Artificial Intelligence's potential for doing good and creating benefits is almost boundless, but equally there is a potential for doing great harm. This panel discusses the findings of a comprehensive three-year project at The Hastings Center, which...Show More

Historian and Carnegie Council Senior Fellow Ted Widmer looks back to the end of the First World War, and the upheaval that followed it in Europe and the U.S., and forward to a new stage in the Trump presidency. Plus, he and host Alex Woodson discuss...Show More

"Were we a business, were we a mission, were we a public service, or were we a profit center?" Alan Rusbridger, former editor-in-chief of "The Guardian," grapples with the questions facing all newspapers in this new age where people "communicate hori...Show More

Education for Employment's Mariel Davis discusses some of the many issues surrounding women's employment in the Middle East and North Africa, focusing on the story of a young Palestinian working in the hospitality industry. Plus, she details the stru...Show More

"The analogy that is at the heart of this book is about a jungle and a garden," says Robert Kagan. "In order to have a garden and sustain a garden, you've got to be constantly gardening. For me at least, that is a good analogy for this liberal world ...Show More

The Rohingya are seen as fundamentally 'other,' says Prasse-Freeman. "Hence, even if they have formal citizenship, they wouldn't really be accepted as citizens, as full members of the polity." Could Aung San Suu Kyi have done more to prevent the pers...Show More

The right to benefit from scientific progress was enshrined in the United Nations' 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, explains University of Copenhagen's Professor Helle Porsdam. Unfortunately, many people, including scientists and policyma...Show More

Professor Saiph Savage is an activist scholar and technology expert who is using large-scale data to study the sophisticated ways in which trolls target certain groups and bombard them with misinformation--for example U.S. Latinos were targeted in th...Show More

Trump has a love-hate relationship with the press, which he calls "the enemy of the people" when it crosses him, knowing nothing of the origins of the phrase, says Marvin Kalb. Yet the pillars of democracy are the sanctity of the court and the freedo...Show More

Can violent societies get better? Rachel Kleinfeld discusses her latest book, "A Savage Order: How the World's Deadliest Countries Can Forge a Path to Security." Her conclusion is ultimately optimistic: Though it's never easy, real democracy (not aut...Show More

When most Americans think about the Taliban, their minds go to Osama bin Laden, terrorism, and the endless war in Afghanistan. But as Jonathan Cristol writes in his book, "The United States and Taliban before and after 9/11," there is much more to th...Show More

In this illuminating conversation, China scholar Joshua Eisenman discusses his two latest books: "Red China's Green Revolution," which overturns the conventional wisdom (both in China and abroad) that Chairman Mao's commune system was a failure; and ...Show More

As activists, politicians, and environmentalists come to terms with a dire report on global warming from the UN's IPCC, Janos Pasztor, executive director of the Carnegie Climate Geoengineering Governance Initiative (C2G2), remains focused on the gove...Show More

In this interview with the Council's John Krzyzaniak, James Pattison (University of Manchester, UK), discusses his book, "The Alternatives to War." Taking what he calls a "pragmatic approach," Pattison outlines seven sets of alternatives, including e...Show More

Henry Kissinger is smart, charming, and a great writer, says historian Robert Brigham. But when it came to Vietnam, his arrogance and deceit made a bad situation worse. Kissinger altered the logbooks for military bombings and misled the president on ...Show More

The Middle East and North Africa has a huge youth and young adult population--65 percent of the people in the region are under 30--but unfortunately unemployment among this group remains high. Education for Employment's Mariel Davis details how the o...Show More

"Much has been said and written about the long and difficult road that led us to the Agreement in April of 1998. Many have deservedly received credit for their roles, but the real heroes of the Agreement were the people and the political leaders of N...Show More

We live in a time when liberal democracy is on the defensive, not only in the U.S. but around the world. Yet these speakers, whose roots reflect the political spectrum, are optimistic that having a fresh discussion on moral values and basic principle...Show More

Malka Older has spent time as an aid worker in Darfur, Indonesia, and Japan, as was discussed in last week's podcast, but she also has another role: science fiction novelist. Her latest book, "State Tectonics," is the third in a series that explores ...Show More

Why has nationalism suddenly returned with a vengeance around the world? Why are nationalists so angry about free trade and immigration? Why has globalization become a dirty word? In this insightful talk, John B. Judis has some answers to these quest...Show More

Former Senior Fellow Malka Older, a novelist and aid worker, details the ethical and logistical sides of disaster response, drawing on her experiences in Sri Lanka, Fukushima, and Darfur. Why are "rich" countries sometimes less prepared to handle ear...Show More

"Is it still fair to say there are continuities in foreign policy two years into the Trump administration? I'm going to say yes, and I'll offer some evidence," declares Derek S. Reveron of the U.S. Naval War College and Harvard Kennedy School. Don't ...Show More

Tom Mahnken and Toshi Yoshihara of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) discuss China and Russia's "authoritarian political warfare." "Not only do they use these influence campaigns, they use economic coercion, occasionally they ...Show More

Senior Fellow Kavitha Rajagopalan explains the troubling situation in Northeast India near the border with Bangladesh, where millions of citizens could end up stateless. With denaturalization increasing exponentially under the Trump administration, w...Show More

According to a recent Amnesty International Report, Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other predominantly Muslim ethnic groups in China's Xinjiang Autonomous Region are the targets of surveillance, arbitrary detention, and forced indoctrination by the Chinese go...Show More

Are there ever justifiable reasons for issuing threats to achieve foreign policy objectives? In particular, are President Trump's threats against Iran justified? Don't miss this rare opportunity to get the Iranian perspective with this stimulating di...Show More

From the world's largest meth trade in Myanmar to "Pyongyang's dancing queens," "neon jihad," and much more, Bangkok-based author Patrick Winn takes us on a tour of the underbelly of Southeast Asia. The region's criminal underworld is valued at $100 ...Show More

Cosmologist and astrophysicist Martin Rees discusses the future of humanity on Earth and beyond, foreseeing a time when space pioneers may use gene splicing and AI to adapt to living on Mars, thus becoming "post-human." What concerns him most? "My wo...Show More

As the Trump administration cuts refugee resettlement in the U.S. to its lowest number in decades, this population in other nations has exploded in recent years. Carnegie Council Senior Fellow Kavitha Rajagopalan details what this looks like for one ...Show More

Has a gap opened up between the U.S. national security community and the general public over foreign policy? If so, why? How can we close it? Moderated by Nikolas Gvosdev, this panel with foreign policy experts Asha Castleberry and Ali Wyne is part o...Show More

This fascinating conversation begins with a discussion of the critical importance of Southeast Asia, including the rise of China and its ambitions in the region. Then Professor Weiss focuses on Malaysia and the return of the formidable 93-year old Ma...Show More

Carnegie Council Senior Fellow Nikolas Gvosdev and host Alex Woodson discuss what U.S. foreign policy could look like if Democrats take Congress in November and/or the White House in 2020. What do Bernie Sanders' views on international affairs have i...Show More

Korea expert Geoffrey Cain talks about his forthcoming book, "The Republic of Samsung," which reveals how the Samsung dynasty (father and son) are beyond the law and are treated as cult figures by their employees--rather like the leaders of North Kor...Show More

The rise of global populism is the greatest threat to global democracy, and it's mainly driven not by economics, but by people's demand for public recognition of their identities, says political scientist Francis Fukuyama. "We want other people to af...Show More

There are three major technological developments that are transforming the way we live, says Jamie Susskind: increasingly capable systems, increasingly integrated technology, and increasingly quantified society. With these we are moving into the "dig...Show More

Responding to excerpts from U.S. Naval War College's Professor Tom Nichols and best-selling author and economist Dambisa Moyo--and the hostile anti-expert tone of the Trump era--Carnegie Council President Joel Rosenthal discusses how he approaches hi...Show More

"There is a significant counterintelligence threat on the West Coast of the U.S., and it differs in meaningful ways from what is commonly perceived of as counterintelligence work and targets on the East Coast," says Senior Fellow Zach Dorfman. He dis...Show More

Who are behind the fake news and political disinformation campaigns that plague the Philippines? "They're not exactly who you think," says Jonathan Corpus Ong, co-author of a recent study on this. The most important players are not the notorious blog...Show More

Senior Fellow Nikolas Gvosdev looks at the reasons for the growing favorability ratings towards Putin's Russia among a certain segment of the American population. Is this a function of Trump's personal affection for the Russian president? Or, as has ...Show More

"Disinformation, fake news, online propaganda is a problem that has gotten attention all over the world, and we're seeing very divergent responses," says Schiffrin, author of "Bridging the Gap: Rebuilding Citizen Trust in Media." "I think the U.S. is...Show More

Historian Andie Tucher takes us through 400 years of fake news in America, starting with a fake story published in 1690. But today, she says, given the the speed, anonymity, and reach of the Internet it's a lot easier to get away with faking news in ...Show More

Responding to an excerpt from a talk by Brookings Institution's William Galston, Senior Fellow Kavitha Rajagopalan and host Alex Woodson discuss immigration from a few different angles, including in the contexts of economics and English language comp...Show More

The Chinese Communist Party's main goals for influence operations in the U.S are "to make sure that the U.S. does not stand in China's way in terms of its global, foreign policy, and economic goals, and second, to silence or marginalize critics," say...Show More

"I see Russia as conducting more smash-and-grab type influence operations. China is in it for the longer term," says author and former U.S. government intelligence analyst Darren Tromblay. China is pursuing multiple campaigns, including efforts to in...Show More

Carnegie Council Senior Fellow Alexander Görlach and host Alex Woodson speak about identity politics in the United States and Europe from their different perspectives. They also discuss how religion and the recent Mexican election fits in to these na...Show More

Jeffrey Mankoff and Olga Oliker of CSIS host a podcast called "Russian Roulette" on all things Russian (and Eurasian), from food and wine to politics. What is the Russian perspective on U.S.-Russia relations and what are the goals of Russia's covert ...Show More

The term "fake news" is a little too tame, says Ann Ravel of the MapLight Digital Deception Project. Actually, this is foreign and domestic political propaganda aimed at undermining U.S. institutions and democracy. Maplight also tracks the enormous, ...Show More

From the unprecedented Trump-Kim meeting, to what some call a treasonous press conference in Finland, to growing tensions between America and its closest allies, as well as its adversaries, this has been a historic summer for international affairs. R...Show More

What's the "anaconda in the chandelier" in China that looms over foreign scholars, journalists, and Chinese citizens expressing their opinions? Find out in this podcast with political scientist and China scholar Andrew Nathan of Columbia University.

"Post-truth doesn't mean that no one cares about truth, it doesn't mean that there isn't any such thing as truth, it just means that there's a critical mass of people who no longer think that they have to form their beliefs based on what's true," say...Show More

Boise State University's Jack Marr discusses how China's approach to the world has changed, from keeping a low profile to "a great push outward." Last year there were over 360,000 Chinese students in the U.S. These students are a great resource, says...Show More

The world's worst humanitarian crisis is ongoing in Yemen, as the Saudi-led coalition, with the support of the U.S., continues its brutal campaign against the entrenched Houthi rebels. Waleed Alhariri, U.S. director of the Sana'a Center for Strategic...Show More

Japan and China, while in a "tactical détente," are engaged in an information battle for foreign hearts and minds over the South China Sea and also Japan's past, says Pugliese of King's College, London. The "China dream" is the doppelganger of the "C...Show More

China and Taiwan have been trying to influence each other ever since 1949, often through very subversive means, says the Global Taiwan Institute's Russell Hsiao, so Taiwan can provide useful lessons on dealing with CCP operations. Of course all gover...Show More

Carnegie Council President Joel Rosenthal and host Alex Woodson discuss the ethical failures of the first 18 months of Trump's presidency, but also why they both see hope for the future. In the face of the daily assault on basic values, where can Ame...Show More

What's the difference between "influence" and "interference" when it comes to China's propaganda operations? How are these efforts structured? War on the Rocks contributing editor Peter Mattis breaks it down in this fascinating conversation. Plus, he...Show More

"In both political debates and academic debates on migration the question of class is often missed," says London School of Economics' Lea Ypi. "When we reduce migration to a problem of open-versus-closed borders, of accepting or under what terms we a...Show More

The July 16 summit and press conference in Helsinki brought the words "treason" and "blackmail" into mainstream conversations about the Trump White House and put an unwanted spotlight back on Ambassador Michael McFaul and other Americans with Russian...Show More

Columbia Journalism School's Mark Hansen, along with his students and "New York Times" journalists, conducted deep, firsthand research into Twitter, buying followers and charting networks, but he was left with even more questions. What does "trending...Show More

Today's discussions about immigrants and refugees are focused on the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy on the U.S.-Mexico border and the "migration crisis" in the Mediterranean. Carnegie Council Senior Fellow Kavitha Rajagopalan explores...Show More

"I think it's important to contrast what China is doing with what Russia is doing," says Asia Society's Isaac Stone Fish. "Russia influence operations and Russia influence is much more about sowing chaos, it's about destabilization, it's about making...Show More

As China's middle class grows, Hollywood is making films with this audience in mind, says the Wilson Center's Robert Daly, previously a producer for the Chinese version of "Sesame Street." How is this different from filmmaking in the World War II and...Show More

In this new podcast series, we'll be connecting current events to Carnegie Council resources through conversations with our Senior Fellows. This week, Devin Stewart discusses how his essay defending the Singapore Summit holds up a month later. Plus, ...Show More

As part of our new Information Warfare podcast series, University of Connecticut historian Alexis Dudden looks at the propaganda efforts coming out of Northeast Asia, with a focus on China's Confucius Institutes at American universities. Is China try...Show More

Carnegie Council Senior Fellow Nikolas Gvosdev looks at some basic questions Trump is asking about the post-Cold War alliance structures. Referencing a recent panel with George Mason's Colin Dueck and International Institute for Strategic Studies' Ko...Show More

What are the challenges that will have the most impact on India's future? Award-winning author Mira Kamdar puts climate change and environmental degradion at the top of the list, including rising sea levels and scarcity of resources. Next is the pro...Show More

As Viktor Orbán continues to enact illiberal policies in Hungary, some, including Harvard's Yascha Mounk, have called for the state to be expelled from the European Union. Carnegie Council Senior Fellow Nikolas Gvosdev puts this idea in a geopolitica...Show More

The Vietnam War ended over 40 years ago, but the U.S. and Vietnam are still coming to terms with the legacy of the toxic herbicide Agent Orange. Yet there is some good news: The cleanup is continuing and the U.S. Congress is committed. Bailey, who le...Show More

On the Global Ethics Forum series finale, best-selling author Robert Kaplan discusses China's global ambitions in an increasingly connected world. In this excerpt Kaplan discusses some of the underreported aspects of China's Belt and Road Initiative....Show More

It's important to understand that Russia and France have had a centuries-long relationship which is mostly positive, say French scholars Marlene Laruelle and Jean-Yves Camus. Today there are layers of close economic and cultural ties, as well as comm...Show More

Thomas Weiss, a leading expert on the history and politics of the United Nations, gives incontrovertible evidence of the UN's achievements, such as the eradication of smallpox, but also details where the organization has fallen short. This is a criti...Show More

In the wake of the countless Western media takes on Trump-Kim, Senior Fellow Devin Stewart defends the Singapore summit and the president's negotiating style and U.S. Air Force veteran Phil Caruso gives an inside perspective of what a freeze of milit...Show More

Next time on Global Ethics Forum Yale Law School’s Amy Chua details the effects of tribalism and group identity on American society. In this excerpt Chua discusses why the United States, after the 2016 election, is acting more like a developing count...Show More

There is a huge divide in the way Americans assess U.S. foreign policy. Take for example, the June G7 meeting, which ended in a clash between Trump and some of America's closest allies: Some say it was a disaster; others say Trump did the right thing...Show More

Why is democracy under siege around the world? Economist Dambisa Moyo cites a host of reasons, such as short-term thinking, low voter turnout, the huge sums spent on lobbying, and growing economic challenges. To fix these problems, she has 10 proposa...Show More

Nadine Strossen gives a rousing, detailed, and convincing defense of free speech as it is laid out in the First Amendment. "American law really is nuanced and makes a great deal of common sense," she says and while censorship of 'hate speech' in othe...Show More

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, 2020 presidential candidate Andrew Yang makes the case for universal basic income in the United States. In this excerpt Yang tells journalist Stephanie Sy how he would pay for $1,000 a month for every American adult.

There is a global surge in "golden visas" for the super-rich, who often have "no connection to the country other than a wire transfer, the ability to press a button, and pass a significant sum of money across borders," says Ayelet Shachar. Countries ...Show More

"Mexico is very present in our daily lives, sometimes even in ways we don't realize," says Andrew Selee. Did you know, for example, that some of America's most famous baked goods, such as Sara Lee, are owned by a Mexican company and made in Pennsylva...Show More

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, Georgetown’s Melanne Verveer discusses the connections between women’s issues, politics, human rights, and economics. In this excerpt Verveer tells journalist Magalie Laguerre-Wilkinson about her role in the Obama ad...Show More

How can you ensure that ethics are a core component, not only of an international affairs education, but of graduates' performance once they go out in the field? In this event for students and alumni of the Elliott School of International Affairs, th...Show More

Rome-based journalist Barbie Latza Nadeau tells the horrifying story of the thousands of Nigerian women and girls duped into being trafficked to Italy, where they are forced to become sex slaves, drug mules, or weapons smugglers. How can this be stop...Show More

Muhammad Musa is executive director of BRAC, which is working with the one million Rohingya refugees living in camps in Bangladesh. He describes the problems there, including growing tensions with the host community and the threat of the coming monso...Show More

In this panel Adrian Basora makes a strong case for democracy as not only promoting American values but also serving U.S. interests, while Maia Otarashvili gives a frightening overview of the rise of "illiberal values" (Viktor Orbán's phrase) in the ...Show More

The popular memory of WWI today was basically engineered through propaganda and censorship during the war itself, says Charles Sorrie. Those involved in any war need convincing reasons why they are fighting. "There needs to be almost some sort of slo...Show More

We are already living with climate change; and although countries have pledged to limit global warming to 2 °C, success seems highly unlikely. This panel explores how to advance ethical leadership on climate justice globally, nationally, and locally ...Show More

Every capitalist economy struggles with how to come to terms with greed, says John Paul Rollert, an expert on the intellectual history of capitalism. He describes how our perspective has changed from the Christian view of greed as an unalloyed sin, t...Show More

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, University of Maryland Baltimore County's Professor Kate Brown details the ethical, social, and health costs of nuclear power since World War II. In this excerpt Brown, author of "Plutopia," and journalist Stephanie ...Show More

"Unknown to the rest of America, we had one regiment of Puerto Ricans in Puerto Rico which was totally integrated. The rest of the military was segregated, and the Puerto Rican regiment was integrated." Military historian Richard Millett discusses so...Show More

As Obama's adviser on Russian affairs, Michael McFaul helped craft the United States' policy known as "reset" that fostered new and unprecedented collaboration between the two countries. Then, as U.S. ambassador to Russia from 2012-2014, he had a fro...Show More

"I'm not making an argument that Maoism is coming back; we're very far away from that. But the crucial thing to recognize is just what we had known as characterizing the reform era is going away, and China is shifting into a more personalized authori...Show More

Over six years, Julie Chernov Hwang conducted over 100 interviews with current and former leaders and followers of radical Islamist groups in Indonesia to find out why some terrorists finally quit. What did she learn? The key is life skills training,...Show More

"What happens when a predator drone has as much as autonomy as a self-driving car, moving to something that is able to do all of the combat functions all by itself, that it can go out, find the enemy, and attack the enemy without asking for permissio...Show More

In the 1930s during the run-up to WWII, many argued that arms manufacturers and bankers--"merchants of death"--had conspired to manipulate the U.S. into entering WWI. What is or should be the role of the profit motive in preparing for war? "This is ...Show More

Unlike Trump, Duterte came to the presidency with a history in public service and he knew how to run a government, says John Gershman. "I would relate him in some ways more to the anti-democratic populist movements of Eastern Europe: authoritarian, a...Show More

Are we witnessing a new era of cosmopolitan justice or are the old principles of victors' justice still in play? Economic and political theorist Daniele Archibugi discusses his new book, "Crime and Global Justice," which examines the history of globa...Show More

Professor Qin Gao, director of Columbia's China Center for Social Policy, explains the workings of the Chinese "Dibao" (limited income guarantee) system. "Dibao is doing relatively better than many other similar programs in developing countries," say...Show More

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, "Atlantic" contributing editor Gregg Easterbrook looks beyond the headlines and makes the case for optimism in an age of fear. In this excerpt, Easterbrook shares some positive statistics about the global food supply...Show More

Growing up in Apartheid-era South Africa, Robert Bank cared about social injustice from an early age. Today he travels the world for AJWS, working with local activists on a range of issues such as women's rights in India and LGBT rights in Uganda. "M...Show More

What are the qualities and conditions that enable people to become successful peacemakers? At a time when peace seems elusive and conflict endemic, Bruce Jentleson makes a forceful and inspiring case for the continued relevance of statesmanship and d...Show More

"What you stopped seeing after World War I was great power conflict involving chemical weapons, and what you started seeing was asymmetric conflicts or regional conflicts that involved chemical weapons. That actually disturbed me even more because wh...Show More

"The failure of globalism [an ideology of bringing people closer together] is very different than the failure of globalization," says Ian Bremmer. "I don't think globalization has failed. It has led to a lot more wealth. It has taken a lot of people ...Show More

"What distinguished Addams from other peace advocates was her strong emphasis on the crucial role of marginalized people, such as women, immigrants, and workers, in the peacemaking process," says Seiko Mimaki. Her views are highly relevant today, whe...Show More

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, Nexus Institute founder Rob Riemen delivers a stark warning about the rise of fascism in the United States and Europe. In this excerpt, Riemen discusses the features of fascism in the 21st century and why it needs to...Show More

Although it has been written about for centuries, post-traumatic stress was not officially recognized as a medical condition until the 1980s. However World War I "was really a turning point in terms of acknowledging and starting to identify and treat...Show More

Are there such things as timeless principles of grand strategy? If so, are they always the same across epochs and cultures? What can we learn from reading the classics, such as Thucydides, Sun Tzu, and Clausewitz? "The fox knows many things, but the ...Show More

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, Institute for Policy Studies’ Chuck Collins discusses extreme inequality in America. In this excerpt, Collins tells journalist Magalie Laguerre-Wilkinson what the one percent needs to do to build a more equitable soc...Show More

"World War I was the beginning of what we now consider to be one of the cornerstones of the ways in which we engage in war," says Major Caruso. "At that time air power was relatively new, it was a nascent technology, but now most countries have some ...Show More

With rich and varied coral reefs, Indonesia and the Philippines are critically important for marine biodiversity, says Brett Jenks of Rare, a conservation organization. Overfishing could result in millions losing their livelihoods and leads to degrad...Show More

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, the UN's Philip Alston discusses poverty in the United States and the dark side of American exceptionalism. In this excerpt, Alston tells journalist Stephanie Sy about a shocking example of extreme poverty in Alabama...Show More

China experts Cunningham and Wasserstrom start by talking about the small, mainly campus-based #MeToo campaign in China--to avoid internet censorship young people often use emojis of a rice bowl and a rabbit, which sound the same as "me too" in Chine...Show More

The revelations about the misuse of Facebook data have started a pushback against the top five big tech companies: Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google. How do approaches to privacy and data use differ in the U.S., Europe, and China? What kin...Show More

Katherine Akey is researching "gueules cassées," soldiers who suffered facially disfiguring injuries on WWI battlefields, focusing on those who were treated at the American Hospital in Paris. Though many of their stories have been lost, haunting phot...Show More

Populist leader President Duterte has killed thousands in his "war on drugs," idolizes Putin, and openly uses fake news and excessive nationalism to consolidate his power. And it's working: he has an 82 percent popularity rating right now. What happe...Show More

"Indonesian civil societies and academics are very good at collecting cases of discrimination," says Sandra Hamid, author of "Normalizing Intolerance." "But what we don't have is the ethnography of the everyday life of discrimination, things that are...Show More

Some unpleasant truths for liberals, from William Galston: The rise of anti-pluralist populist movements is caused by a combination of economic factors and migration; we need to take these concerns seriously, instead of feeling morally superior. In ...Show More

Are there differences in political, social, and economic attitudes among Indonesians--and Indonesian Muslims in particular--based on their levels of religious piety? Intriguingly, Tom Pepinsky and his fellow researchers found that the answer is no; p...Show More

Today we can accurately measure happiness and we know much more about its causes, says Professor Layard. It turns out that getting richer is often not enough for real happiness. So now, instead of just looking at GDP, many policymakers around the wor...Show More

Automation is causing the greatest shift in human history and will put millions of Americans out of work, says entrepreneur and 2020 presidential candidate Andrew Yang. His solution? Put human values before GDP and provide a universal basic income of...Show More

Europe is going through deep structural changes, says Andrew Michta of the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies. He argues that it may become "a "Europe of clusters," where countries even within the EU will align themselves differe...Show More

If you wish to understand the depth and breadth of the geographical, historical, technological, and political forces that are shaping our world, there is no better guide than Robert Kaplan. Using Marco Polo's journey as "a geographical framing device...Show More

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, International Rescue Committee president David Miliband discusses the moral tragedy of the refugee crisis and what the West needs to do. In this excerpt, Miliband brings up the moral, strategic, and historic reasons ...Show More

Professional diplomats are made not born, says Nicholas Kralev of the Washington International Diplomatic Academy. It's not enough to be a people person: training is needed in specific skills. Sadly, many Americans don't realize how diplomats' succes...Show More

"Despite the vibrancy of civil society, political and economic power continues to be in the hands of very few people in the Philippines. In fact, there are statistics that would say that if you want to make one important policy decision, you only hav...Show More

Before Nuremberg--indeed, long before the end of the war--there was the United Nations War Crimes Commission, a little-known agency which assisted national governments in putting on trial thousands of Axis war criminals in Europe and Asia. Why do we ...Show More

Anthropologist Sopranzetti's new book discusses the surprising role of motorcycle taxi drivers in a recent coup in Thailand, and their important place in everyday Thai life. In this fascinating interview, he also looks at the bigger picture: "there i...Show More

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, British philosopher A. C. Grayling discusses the crisis of democracy in the U.S. and UK and how we can fix it. In this excerpt, Grayling talks about some unfortunate traditions in British politics that are especially...Show More

We have made tremendous progress, but there's still a long way to go, says Melanne Verveer, head of Georgetown's Institute for Women, Peace and Security and former ambassador-at-large for global women's issues. She looks forward to the day when "wome...Show More

"The United States today is starting to display destructive political dynamics much more typically associated with developing countries: ethno-nationalist movements, the erosion of trust in our institutions and electoral outcomes, and above all, the ...Show More

The maximum penalty for blasphemy in Pakistan is death, and public protest is not allowed. Indonesia is nowhere near as bad as this--yet. "Indonesia is now going down the Pakistan route," says Andreas Harsono of Human Rights Watch. "There are more a...Show More

Rich and poor, we're all dependent on the global financial system and it can be a force for good, says human rights law professor David Kinley, but the incentive structures within banking encourage people to behave unethically. In other words, "finan...Show More

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, Climate Museum founder Miranda Massie discusses the need for all Americans to take an interest in the environment. In this excerpt, Massie tells journalist Magalie Laguerre-Wilkinson how her previous career prepared ...Show More

Can tyranny happen here? asks historian Timothy Snyder. His chilling answer is, "it can happen, it happens to people like us, and it is happening now." How can we fight back? Snyder offers 20 lessons; the first is the most important, as if we fail in...Show More

Satyagraha, one of Gandhi's most influential teachings, stresses "passive resistance" in the face of injustice. Qunnipiac's Gadkar-Wilcox saw a powerful example of this in regards to a debate in India over sanitary napkins and she also sees it as Flo...Show More

Today, many feel paralyzed by the constant stream of bad news. Yet as Gregg Easterbrook shows, statistics on crime, poverty, and longevity prove that things are actually getting better, both in the United States and most of the world. So why do we se...Show More

What are the real facts about fake news? Brendan Nyhan is co-author of an important new study on fake news consumption during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. He discovered that a staggering one in four Americans visited a fake news site in the m...Show More

In this fascinating conversation, Jeremy Bailenson, director of Stanford University's Virtual Human Interaction Lab, describes how virtual reality (VR) can be used as a force for good. By immersing people in experiences they wouldn't otherwise have, ...Show More

Are Americans too deferential to the armed forces, becoming increasingly willing to "outsource" judgement to the military? Senior Fellow Nikolas Gvosdev talks with Dr. Kori Schake of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, co-author with J...Show More

No more euphemisms and denials, says Rob Riemen in this frightening and inspiring talk. Call it by its name: fascism. Neither technology, nor economic growth, nor political activism can fix this, he continues. We must create a new counterculture that...Show More

In his third book on slavery, which took 16 years of research, Siddharth Kara calculates that there are roughly 31 million slaves worldwide, at least half of them in South Asia. We need to apply much more resources and compassion to end "this horribl...Show More

There are few countries in the world that are more misrepresented in the West than Iran. By exploring the imperial rivalries that played out there, the dynastic changes and revolutions, the population explosion, the role of religion, and Iran's relat...Show More

Former ambassador to Burma Derek Mitchell examines the complex situation there, including the roots of the ongoing Rohingya crisis and China's influence there. Aung San Suu Kyi is not providing the necessary leadership, he says--despite her constrain...Show More

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Steven Cook discusses the violent aftermath of the Arab Spring. In this excerpt, Cook describes how and why Washington got its response wrong to revolutions in the Middle Ea...Show More

"'Likes' don't count," was the rallying cry that first brought people to the Maidan. In this remarkable conversation, Marci Shore explores what it means "to experience revolution in your own skin": the human transformation, blurring of time, and dest...Show More

Chuck Collins grew up in a wealthy family and gave away his fortune at the age of 26, yet he realizes that he still has advantages accrued over generations. The current level of inequality is bad for society as a whole, he declares. "It is not in an...Show More

Probably the most dangerous geopolitical environment in decades-China, AI, Trump, end of Pax Americana--yes, it's very bad. But all these challenges energize political scientist Ian Bremmer to do his best work! Don't miss this great talk.

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, Carnegie Council Senior Fellow Marlene Laruelle explains the rise of far right political parties throughout Europe. In this excerpt, Laruelle and journalist Magalie Laguerre-Wilkinson discuss the issues of immigratio...Show More

Asha Castleberry, Fordham professor and U.S. Army veteran, describes her "mixed reaction" to Trump's National Security Strategy--touching on China and Russia, cybersecurity, and climate change--and what effect it will actually have on the military's ...Show More

The UN's Philip Alston traveled across the U.S. recently and found appalling conditions, from homelessness in California to open sewage in rural Alabama. He discusses the political choices that allow this to continue and proposes solutions.

Over two years after the release of a report on sexual exploitation and abuse by international peacekeeping forces in the Central African Republic, chaired by Marie Deschamps, has anything changed? Not much, says Deschamps in this shocking interview....Show More

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, Harvard's Graham Allison discusses why he thinks the United States and China could be on track for war. In this excerpt, Allison describes why China is in a position to challenge America as the world's preeminent sup...Show More

"I would say most of the people I have talked to outside of government, including some people in Congress, have been a little taken aback," says Julie Smith, senior fellow at Center for a New American Security. "A lot of people have been left scratch...Show More

"I would say that the principle of humanity, and humanity in war even, is a global ethic. We can trace it through human history," says ICRC's Hugo Slim. Don't miss this in-depth discussion about the work of the Red Cross and its core humanitarian eth...Show More

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, former Republican congressman Bob Inglis discusses how he went from climate change denier to activist and a conservative approach to environmentalism. In this excerpt, Inglis explains to journalist Stephanie Sy how c...Show More

Did you know that Tunisia started championing women's rights in the eighth century, and is still far ahead of most Arab and Muslim-majority countries? Indeed Tunisia's trajectory on many fronts has been radically more progressive than that of other A...Show More

Although today's hot topic is nuclear proliferation, let's not forget that wars like Syria are being fought with conventional ones, such as aircraft and artillery. Jonathan Caverley has an intriguing and practical proposal to slow down the spread of ...Show More

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, Stony Brook professor Jonathan Sanders discusses the media and propaganda in Russia, from Soviet times to Putin. In this excerpt, Sanders, former CBS News Moscow correspondent, describes to journalist Randall Pinksto...Show More

In some ways Europe is more fragmented than at any time in the last three decades, says Drozdiak. There's a north/south split between wealthy creditor nations and deeply indebted ones; an east/west divide, as Poland and Hungary revert to nationalism;...Show More

Did you know that 122 countries have adopted a treaty to ban nuclear weapons? The organization behind this movement is the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). In this spirited and informative discussion, Ray Acheson and Beatrice...Show More

Today there are 65 million people who have fled their homes because of conflict or persecution, says the International Rescue Committee's David Miliband. These are refugees not economic migrants, and half of them are children. It's a long-term crisis...Show More

Despite defeats like Mosul and Raqqa, ISIS and other extremist groups are thriving, says Ullah. For them, the most important battlefield is not the physical one but the information one, and there they are winning. They are nimble, moving from open-so...Show More

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, Columbia’s Mark Lilla discusses his controversial book “The Once and Future Liberal” and how America can move forward in the Trump era. In this excerpt, Lilla explains the dire consequences of liberals playing identi...Show More

Hofstra University's Jess Holzer is focused on improving public health at the community level. But she teaches that good intentions alone are not enough to build an inclusive and succesful project. What are the tangible benefits of showing respect as...Show More

In a wide-ranging conversation, Emmy award-winning Vice News producer Josh Davis takes Devin Stewart behind the scenes of his in-depth documentaries, from the deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville to daily life in North Korea.

What has led to the rise of far-right parties across Europe and how have they evolved over time? Is immigration really the main issue, or is there a more complex set of problems that vary from nation to nation? What are the ideological and practical ...Show More

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, Sam Kass details his time as President Obama’s White House chef and senior policy advisor for nutrition and the links between climate change and how and what we eat. In this excerpt, Kass and journalist Roxana Saberi...Show More

Francis Wade, author of "The Enemy Within," a new book on the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar, explains the historical background to the persecution of the Muslim Rohingya minority and gives a first-hand account of the terrible situation now. Has democrac...Show More

There is disturbing evidence that China is weaponizing North Korea, and it's time that Washington started asking Beijing some pointed questions, says Gordon Chang. The fact is, the United States has overwhelming leverage over China--we just don't use...Show More

How does climate change play into Xi Jinping's larger strategy for China's economy and its role on the global stage? Xi has a vision for addressing climate change and pollution; but how is it implemented in practice, especially in the hinterlands far...Show More

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, Columbia's David Phillips discusses how Erdoğan's Turkey has turned from an important U.S. ally to a rogue regime. In this excerpt, Phillips asks pointed questions about the July 2016 coup, which led to Erdoğan crack...Show More

Duterte is part of an arc of populism in emerging market democracies such as Turkey and India, says author Haydarian, but unlike populist movements in developed economies, its main supporters are the rising middle class. This newly prosperous group d...Show More

Thucydides is not saying that the inevitable frictions between a rising power and a ruling one will always lead to war, says Allison. The danger is when "third-party actions become provocations to which one or the other feels obliged to react, to whi...Show More

Chernobyl is considered the greatest nuclear disaster of all time. But over decades America's Hanford plant and Russia's Mayak plant each issued almost four times the amount of radiation as Chernobyl. Historian Kate Brown explains that in the closed ...Show More

Representative democracy in the UK has been corrupted by the three B's, says Grayling: blackmail, bullying, and bribery. There are similar problems in the United States. To make things worse, covert persuasion tactics via social media are rampant. Ye...Show More

Half a decade after Arabs across the Middle East poured into the streets to demand change, hopes for democracy have disappeared in a maelstrom of violence and renewed state repression. How did things go so wrong so quickly across a wide range of regi...Show More

Hurricane Sandy was the catalyst that impelled Miranda Massie to quit her job as a civil rights lawyer and found the Climate Museum. "I think that climate change is THE equality and THE civil rights issue of the 21st century," she says. Why open this...Show More

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, Microsoft Research’s danah boyd discusses the ethical and political implications of big data and artificial intelligence. In this excerpt, boyd explains to journalist Stephanie Sy some of the disturbing issues that a...Show More

"Though most of the literature you will read on the future of war certainly talks about war as between regular armies, as proper fights, now with drones or with autonomous vehicles or robots or whatever, or even painless--cyber and so on--yet actuall...Show More

Carnegie Council President Joel Rosenthal and Senior Fellow Devin Stewart discuss the challenges to liberalism, in the United States and on the international stage, and explain today's debates through a historical context. Have too many forgotten why...Show More

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, Earth Institute executive director Steven Cohen offers hope for a sustainable future. In this excerpt, Cohen tells journalist Stephanie Sy that despite Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris agreement, the momentu...Show More

How can we engage with Muslims around the world without really understanding what they believe? On studying the Qur'an, religious scholar Garry Wills found that many of our perceptions of Islam are false or distorted. Most surprisingly, Islam is a ve...Show More

Republican politician Bob Inglis used to think that climate change was nonsense; but his son--and science--changed his mind. Today he advocates letting market forces do their work. "The thing to do is to make it apparent in the marketplace what the c...Show More

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, retired U.S. Navy Admiral James Stavridis discusses the history and geopolitics of the world’s oceans. In this excerpt, Stavridis discusses the vastness of the Pacific Ocean and its military and economic significance...Show More

How much of a threat is fake news to the average citizen? What is Google doing to counteract its spread? Learn more with this conversation with Daniel Sieberg, co-founder of Google News Lab. Launched about three years ago, the News Lab is a small tea...Show More

The liberal order was never truly a global order, and we're not entering a multipolar era either, says Amitav Acharya. It's more accurate to call it a decentered, "multiplex" world, one where there are multiple consequential actors and complex global...Show More

To mark Carnegie Council's Centennial, Michael Ignatieff and team set out to discover what moral values people hold in common across nations. What he found was that while universal human rights may be the language of states and liberal elites, what r...Show More

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams discusses the exceptionalism of America’s free speech laws. In this excerpt, Abrams cites Donald Trump’s presidential campaign rhetoric to highlight different legal standards in sp...Show More

Jonathan Sanders lived in Russia for a total of roughly 20 years, both as an academic researcher and as a journalist for CBS News, and has an insider's perspective on Russia and its people. He discusses the contradictions of Russian media under Putin...Show More

"Democrats/liberals need to understand how we lost our grip on the American imagination. Why is it that we are unable to project an image of the kind of country that we want to build together, a vision that would draw people together?" Mark Lilla bla...Show More

"We need to face the fact that Turkey under Erdoğan has become a rogue regime," declares David L. Phillips. It's a corrupt, repressive, Islamist dictatorship. The U.S. should no longer regard it as an ally, but as a strategic adversary.

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, journalist James Traub discusses the ethical questions surrounding the refugee crisis in Western Europe. In this excerpt, Traub talks with journalist Stephanie Sy about his time in Sweden, the country’s generosity, a...Show More

Entrepreneur Sam Kass talks about his experiences as chef and senior policy nutrition advisor in the White House, including titbits about the Obamas, initiatives to improve schoolchildren's health, and the lunch he served to world leaders made up of ...Show More

How do we analyze vast swaths of data and who decides what to collect? For example, big data may help us cure cancer, but the choice of data collected for police work or hiring may have built-in biases, explains danah boyd. "All the technology is try...Show More

Carnegie Council President Joel Rosenthal and Senior Fellow Devin Stewart discuss the tense North Korea situation. What does Kim Jong-un want? How should the United States respond? What would the "enlightened realist" do?

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, Stanford’s Scott Sagan discusses an ethical approach to America’s nuclear weapon policy. In this excerpt, Sagan talks with journalist Randall Pinkston about the changing role of civilians with regards to control of t...Show More

What are the social and ethical implications of new technologies such as widespread automation and gene editing? These innovations are no longer in the realm of science fiction, says entrepreneur and technology writer Vivek Wadhwa. They are coming cl...Show More

"When you have a president like Trump, you do have to ask yourself: 'What will the United States look like in five years or in ten years?' A strong United States is what the government of Japan wants. In that sense, Trump is a threat. It is one that ...Show More

"Ethics will be found in people of good will who believe in constructive responses to hard policy challenges. Ethics will be demonstrated by those who are willing to take a stand in defense of the core values of pluralism, rights, and fairness. Ethic...Show More

George Washington understood that building capable partners during peacetime can actually prevent war, says Heidi Grant. She is deputy under secretary of the Air Force, International Affairs, an organization which works with over a hundred countries ...Show More

Under Xi Jinping, China is stepping up a crackdown on freedom of expression, including in universities, reports China expert Joshua Eisenman. Is this the beginning of a new Cultural Revolution, as some people fear? If so, we need to understand that t...Show More

After four decades of stellar growth, where is China's economy headed today? "In the last few years not only has the economy slowed down, but the government's commitment to economic liberalization has waned," warns Scott Kennedy, an expert on China's...Show More

"I think the biggest impact of Donald Trump's presidency, particularly in Asia-Pacific, has been the concept of uncertainty," says Baker, citing the lack of a clear and concise policy from the administration. "Uncertainty, if the United States were j...Show More

In this post-TPP world where the U.S. has taken a step back from Asia, the vacuum is being filled by China's initiatives, such as the One Belt One Road, says Ziad Haider, former State Department special representative for commercial and business affa...Show More

Major changes must be made if U.S. nuclear war plans are to conform to the principles of just war doctrine and the law of armed conflict, declares Stanford University's Scott Sagan. He proposes a new doctrine: "the nuclear necessity principle." In su...Show More

Michele Wucker describes a gray rhino as the "love child of the black swan and the elephant in the room." In other words, "it's a metaphor for the big, obvious thing that's coming at you that you've got a choice to deal with or not." Why has this con...Show More

Since South Sudan's civil war broke out in late 2013, soldiers on both sides have been using rape and other forms of sexual violence on a massive scale as a weapon of war, says Amnesty International's Sarah Jackson. The resulting refugee crisis is pu...Show More

Tired of conventional wisdom? Check out geopolitical forecaster George Friedman. The period that began at the end of World War II was a freak, he says. "We're returning to a more normal structure in which the nation-state is dominant, international t...Show More

"First and foremost, a G-zero is a world in which no one country has dominant power or can influence the international system of governance," explains political risk expert Meredith Sumpter. "We are amidst a transition to a multipolar world, a world ...Show More

In this inspiring interview, Brig. Gen. Bolduc discusses his time in Afghanistan and his assessment of the situation there as well as in Africa, where he was in charge of countering violent extremism. He also reveals his experiences with PTSD, trauma...Show More

In the West we view cyber threats as largely a technical issue, while in Russia and China they see it in terms of propaganda, information control, and influencing their domestic affairs, says Alex Klimburg. When we confuse these two narratives, we ri...Show More

Thucydides's Trap is the dangerous dynamic that occurs when a rising power threatens to displace a ruling power, explains Harvard's Graham Allison. So is war between China and the United States inevitable? No, says Allison, but both nations will have...Show More

Asia Society's Isaac Stone Fish is working on a novel set in Pyongyang, but he's also looking for the truth in the "world's most opaque country." Why does he think the North Koreans are acting rationally? What are the possible outcomes if tensions co...Show More

The U.S. and China have fundamentally different priorities regarding the Korean Peninsula, explains Asia expert Rapp-Hooper. "So, by subcontracting North Korea policy to China," she says, "I think the United States is evincing some amount of naïveté ...Show More

How should companies strategize in the age of "Brump" (shorthand for Brexit and Trump)? Should they think locally rather than globally? Are trade wars inevitable, and if so, how will they affect countries large and small? Don't miss this analysis fro...Show More

"This has happened before where we've had a great power who is essentially the leader of the international system taking a transactional approach. The closest example would be maybe Bismarck in the 1870s until the eve of World War I. There it worked ...Show More

"I still believe that we're heading toward a renewable resource-based economy. I think that it's inevitable," declares Steven Cohen. How will we get there? A combination of market forces as renewables become cheaper, better technology, and the sharin...Show More

Across the world today, there is active hostility towards experts, says Tom Nichols of the U.S. Naval War College, and this is a very dangerous trend. Donald Trump didn't create this, but he certainly weaponized it politically, just as Brexiteers did...Show More

The result of a war with China? "At best we have to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on weapons nobody will use which are badly in need of nation building at home; at worst, we get into a war with a major power that has nuclear weapons."

"Unless we are able to overcome our strategic attention deficit disorder for lack of a better phrase, and unless we are able to not only compete anew economically in the region, but also shape a constructive economic agenda in the region, I fear that...Show More

The soldier "is at once the most and the least civilized of persons," says Carnegie Council Senior Fellow Reed Bonadonna. In this thoughtful conversation, he discusses his new book; military ethics through the ages; and the relationship between the a...Show More